Using PowerShell to burn FLACs with CD-Text

Published 04/07/2026

powershell (1) music (1) physical-media (1)

I've been working on my grandpa's old minivan lately, and have been wanting to burn some CDs to enjoy on the radio in there. I'm one of those weirdos that still maintains a music library (some of the songs date back to my first iPod Nano) so I have a lot of FLACs on-hand. I burned (burnt?) a bunch of discs from my MusicBee library but was disappointed after hitting the road and realizing that many of them just play an intensely unpleasant digital static. I suspect that this is to do with much of my modern music being in "Hi-Res" 24bit audio, sometimes in different sample rates than CD's standard 44.1kHz. MusicBee didn't appear to bother converting these or warning about the issue and happily wasted some happy discuses on my behalf.

From looking online, the consensus appears to be that the way to burn CDs (and include CD-Text data) is using ImgBurn. ImgBurn gave me some definite nostalgia hearing the chime at the end of a burn, but the process of getting everything that far was pretty tedious. You have to transcode/resample the audio to make it compatible with the CD format and get the tags in to build a cue file before you can burn it.

So, as is seemingly the norm for me, instead of spending a few minutes doing the tedious/repetitive task, I wasted my entire evening writing a PowerShell script to do it for me. Point it at a folder of FLACs and it will convert them to the appropriate format, generate a CUE file with CD-Text information, and open up ImgBurn with the settings loaded up so all the interaction from there is clicking the burn button. Thought I'd share in case anyone winds up with the same very specific issue.

Enjoy!

2026_04_BurnCdWithPowershell.ps1

class Song {
    hidden [string[]] $FfmpegOutput;
    hidden [string] $CuePath;

    [string] $Album;
    [string] $Artist;
    [string] $Title;
    [string] $OutputPath;
    [string] $SourcePath;
    [int] $Index;

    Song([System.IO.FileSystemInfo] $file, [int] $index) {
        $this.SourcePath = $file;
        $this.CuePath = "$($file.BaseName).wav"
        $this.OutputPath = "./Burn/$($this.CuePath)";
        $this.Index = $index;
    }

    [void] Convert() {
        $this.FfmpegOutput = (ffmpeg -i $this.SourcePath -ar 44100 -sample_fmt s16 -map_metadata 0:s:0 -y $this.OutputPath 2>&1);
        $this.Album = $this.GetMetaAttribute("album");
        $this.Artist = $this.GetMetaAttribute("artist");
        $this.Title = $this.GetMetaAttribute("title");
    }

    hidden [string] GetMetaAttribute($attribute) {
        if ([string]::IsNullOrWhiteSpace($this.FfmpegOutput)) {
            return $null;
        }
        [string] $line = $this.FfmpegOutput | Select-String "   $Attribute";
        if ([string]::IsNullOrWhiteSpace($line)) {
            return $null;
        }
        [string[]] $split = $line.Split(":");
        if ($null -eq $split -or $split.Length -lt 2) {
            return $null;
        }
        [string] $trimmed = $split[1].Trim();

        # Normalize the text using FormKD (Compatibility Decomposition, followed by Canonical Composition)
        $normalizedText = [System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex]::Replace($trimmed, '\p{M}', '').Normalize([System.Text.NormalizationForm]::FormKD)

        # Remove diacritic marks
        return [System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex]::Replace($normalizedText, '\p{M}', '')
    }

    [string[]] CreateCueSegment() {
        return "
FILE `"$($this.CuePath)`" WAVE
  TRACK $($this.Index.ToString('00')) AUDIO
    TITLE `"$($this.Title)`"
    PERFORMER `"$($this.Artist)`"
    INDEX 01 00:00:00";
    }
}


function ConvertTo-RedbookAudio {
    if (-not [bool] (Get-Command -ErrorAction Ignore -Type Application "ffmpeg")) {
        Write-Error "ffmpeg does not appear to be installed or is not registered in the path.";
        return;
    }

    # convert / resample for CD
    New-Item -Force -Type Directory "Burn" | Out-Null;

    [Song[]] $songs = @();
    [int] $index = 1;
    [System.IO.FileSystemInfo[]] $flacs = Get-ChildItem -Filter "*.flac";
    $flacs | Select-Object | ForEach-Object {
        Write-Progress -PercentComplete ($index * 100 / $flacs.Length ) -Activity "Converting Songs" -Status "Transcoding $_";
        [Song] $song = [Song]::new($_, $index);
        $songs += $song;
        $song.Convert();

        $index++;
    }

    # Create CUE File to burn
    [string] $albumName = $songs[0].Album;
    [string] $cueSheet = "TITLE `"$albumName`"
PERFORMER `"$($songs[0].Artist)`"";
    $songs | ForEach-Object {
        $cueSheet += $_.CreateCueSegment();
    }

    $cueSheet | Out-File -Force "./Burn/$albumName.cue";

    # launch IMGBurn if we can
    [string] $executablePath = "$(${env:ProgramFiles(x86)})\IMGBurn\ImgBurn.exe";
    if (Test-Path $executablePath) {
        $cueFile = Get-Item "./Burn/$albumName.cue";
        & $executablePath /mode WRITE /source $cueFile.FullName;
    }
}